


You Got Me Wishing

by thesepossessedbylight



Category: Holby City
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-09-01 16:53:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8631538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesepossessedbylight/pseuds/thesepossessedbylight
Summary: The wine was never intended to be Bernie's real gift for Serena; that was a Heathrow duty-free panic purchase. But Bernie is too embarrassed to give Serena her real gift, so she puts it on her bedroom table, where it stares at her until she (wo)mans up and gives it to Serena. Gratuitous fluff, angst and misuse of Leonard Cohen are involved.





	

The wine was never intended to be Serena's real gift; it was a panic-purchase at Heathrow duty free, as Bernie passed through, wondering what she was going back to at Holby. She knows it looks bad, really; she knows it looks ungrateful and callous - the gift of a colleague to a colleague, when she and Serena were so much more to each other. She knows that. But during her flight from Kyiv she'd taken a look at the real gift she'd bought, and she was suddenly struck by a pang of, 'oh no. What if I've fucked things up so much they're not salvageable? Better get her something else instead.' Hence the panic-buying, which Bernie knows for a fact is never a great idea.

No, her real gift is something much more personal. A few days before Bernie fled, she and Serena shared the graveyard shift one night. It was a literal graveyard shift, too; they lost two patients to a four-car pile-up and although she barely said a word when Bernie called time of death in theatre, Bernie knew Serena was distressed that they'd been unable to save them. Later in their shift, when everything had gone quiet on the ward, Bernie sneaked away, purse in hand, to buy Serena a coffee and a pain au chocolate. Least she could do, really. When she came back to their shared office she found Serena curled on her chair wearing earbuds, one hand propping up her head. When Serena saw Bernie hovering awkwardly in the doorway she pulled her earbuds out with a wry smile, waving one hand aimlessly in the air.

“Mind if I come in?” Bernie asked, motioning with the hand holding the chocolate pastry. “Only I thought you could probably use this…”

“God, Berenice Wolfe,” Serena replied, dark eyes ablaze with some unknown feeling as she piled the earbuds on her desk and pulled Bernie by her hand towards her.

Bernie grinned, letting Serena tear the pastry bag in half and placing her coffee in front of her. She caught a glimpse of the Youtube video Serena was listening to and raised an eyebrow as she turned to grab a chair of her own.

"Fan of Leonard Cohen then, yeah?" Bernie asked, sipping on her own coffee, hungry for the caffeine.

"He's got me through a lot of rough patches," Serena said quietly, handing one earbud to Bernie. Serena pressed play again and -

_\- to ya? There’s a blaze of light in every word // it doesn’t matter which you heard // the holy, or the broken Hallelujah -_

Bernie pulled her earbud out. Not Hallelujah, she thought. I know what comes next. “You - you like this song, then?” she asked, gazing down at the earbud in her hand.

Serena turned to her, mouthing the lyrics from the next verse. “ _‘I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch // I’ve told the truth - I didn’t come to fool ya…’_ It’s one of my favourite songs, actually,” she said. “Always loved it.”

Bernie smiled. “Oh. Well,” she trailed off, unwilling to spoil Serena’s favourite song with her memories of Alex quietly panting you saw her bathing on the roof // her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya as Bernie, fully-clothed, thrust against her thigh behind a shed in the glare of the Afghan sun. Indelibly linked with Alex, that song, Bernie thought, and edged further towards Serena’s warmth as she resolved to put those associations aside.

It turned out that Serena had created an entire playlist of Leonard Cohen songs, and the last hour of their shift was spent curled together sharing Serena’s earbuds as they sipped their coffee. Bernie pinched a tiny sliver of Serena’s pain au chocolate and Serena slapped her knee in playful retribution. When Hallelujah came around again on the shuffle, at the words ‘and from your lips she drew the hallelujah’ Serena leaned over and kissed Bernie quickly, shyly, on the side of her jaw.

And then Hanssen offered the secondment, and Serena told her she loved her, and Bernie fled, and it all went to shit.

And now Bernie is back, holding a bottle of wine she didn’t even really mean to buy. But somehow, despite Bernie’s epic fuck-ups, Serena still likes her, and the one thing that Kyiv gave Bernie was the sure certainty that she loved Serena. But she’s still too awkward to actually give Serena the real present she bought for her, and it sits in her luggage, and then it sits on her kitchen table, and then she moves it to her bedside table, where it sits for another few weeks. Eventually Bernie has the awful feeling that it’s grown eyes and is glaring balefully at her, so she makes a call to Cameron. Asks to borrow his record-player - he’s such a hipster that even without asking, she knows as an absolute certainty that he owns one. Arranges to pick it up from him, agrees to take care of it properly, agrees to give it back when she’s done with it. And then one morning she gets into work early, a full hour before her shift, and smuggles it into her and Serena’s shared office, glaring at Raf and anyone else who might dare comment.

Her side of the office is messy enough that a record player can be relatively easily disguised by papers and Bernie’s old hoodies - and even army medics had to take a compulsory survival skills course, which included successfully disguising one’s self with whatever was to hand. Bernie, of course, turned out to be a pro at disguising herself, fading into the background with ease, and so hiding a record player in the nuclear test site of her office wasn’t very difficult.

And then it’s like time repeats itself: a few months after Bernie arrives back in Holby she and Serena again share the graveyard shift, and - tragically - there’s a traffic accident on the M4 towards Caerleon. This time a speeding motorbike plunged into a truck; miraculously the rider is still alive when he’s delivered to AAU but he bleeds out on the operating table, and Bernie is left to call time of death as Serena stands motionless, gloved hands soaked in the young man’s blood. Bernie leaves to take off her operating robes, wash and scrub her hands, and take off her cap, but when she returns Serena is still standing in the now-empty operating room, hands still bloody.

“Hey,” Bernie says quietly, from behind Serena, and Serena jumps.

“Bernie. Sorry.” Serena lets her hands drop to her sides. “What a waste.”

Bernie takes one of Serena’s hands in her own, peels the glove off, tosses it towards the rubbish bin. Repeats the process with the other hand. Tries not to notice how warm Serena’s hands are.

“You don’t have to -“ Serena starts, but Bernie interrupts.

“I want to, Serena,” she says, as she undoes Serena’s plastic operating apron and tosses that in the bin as well. The skin at the nape of Serena’s neck is so unbelievably soft and Bernie can’t resist placing a silent kiss there. Serena shivers, and turns to face Bernie, leaning their heads together, noses touching.

“He looked so much like Cameron, Bernie,” she says, low, a secret shared only between them. “I was ok while I was operating, but a few seconds before you called it I realised I was unable to get it out of my head how much he looked like Cameron.”

Bernie wraps her arms around Serena more tightly, hugging her as if she could squeeze all the hurt away. And then she has an idea, and pulls away.

“Look can you clean yourself up and then hang out at the nurses’ station for a few minutes?” She grips Serena by the shoulders, hoping she’ll understand Bernie’s not abandoning her.

Serena frowns, but says, “Yeah, I guess. You going to tell me why?”

Bernie’s already sprinting out of the room, but she turns around with a smile. “You’ll find out soon enough!”

Five minutes later Bernie has bought two pains au chocolate, two (very strong) coffees, and has also splashed out on a vending machine chocolate bar for Serena, just in case she needs it. She sets up the record player and places her gift on top. Finally, she marches up to the nurses’ station and steers Serena away from her conversation with Morven.

“Sorry Morven!” she says over her shoulder. “Can you make sure we’re not interrupted for the next little while?”

Serena looks over her shoulder at Bernie, walking close behind. “What’s going on, Bern?” she asks, and then they’re at the door of their office. Bernie closes it behind them, making sure they have a little privacy, and takes a deep breath.

“I, ah. I bought this for you in Kyiv,” she says, picking up the present and holding it out to Serena. “The record player’s not mine, I’m afraid - I borrowed it for a while but I can buy you one if you’d like.”

Serena quirks an eyebrow as she takes the present. “That’s a bit overkill, don’t you think?” She tears the wrapping as she tries to open the flat, square shape and Bernie immediately says, “Don’t worry, just please open it!”

Serena grins wryly, tearing a corner off to reveal pale yellow underneath. She quickly tears the rest off and promptly forgets the rest of the paper, which floats gently to the floor as she stares at a vinyl copy of Leonard Cohen’s Popular Problems.

“Bernie,” she says, still staring at it.

The room is silent for a few seconds, then Bernie panics.

“Oh God,” she says, scraping a hand down the side of her face. “You don’t like it. I should never have - you probably have it already - “

Serena seems to be in a daze: she puts the vinyl down, very, very slowly onto Bernie’s desk, steps forward a single step - and kisses Bernie, wrapping her arms around Bernie’s neck, pulling Bernie’s hair tie out so she can have better access to wind her fingers through Bernie’s hair. It’s a whirlwind and an avalanche all at once, and Bernie kisses back as good as she gets, pulling Serena impossibly close, so close she thinks she can feel her heartbeat, thinks she can feel her heart pumping warm, life-blood through Serena’s veins.

After a few minutes Serena pulls away, cradles Bernie’s head with her hands, peppers kisses along her jaw. Slowly, Bernie is able to make out the words Serena is whispering under her breath: “Thank you, thank you Bernie, thank you.”

Bernie tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, and blushes. “When I was in Kyiv,” she begins, and Serena closes her eyes, almost as if she’s bracing herself for something. Bernie kisses her instead, softly this time, cradling her skull as if it’s truly made of eggshells, and begins again. “When I was in Kyiv I, uh. I got a bit obsessive. All I listened to was Leonard Cohen, because it was the only thing that made me feel close to you. Eventually I found Popular Problems. I think I listened to this album for a week straight? And I found a song that says something I want you to hear.”

She picks up the album, pulls the vinyl out and places it on the turntable. Squatting down, she squints to find the tiny band of smooth vinyl that signals the beginning of a song, and places the needle gently (so slowly she thinks the space between her fingers and the vinyl itself might be infinite, might be able to be stretched out like a microcosm of space and time itself) onto the vinyl.

 _“You got me singing,”_ sings Leonard Cohen from the turntable, _“even though the news is bad.”_

Serena sniffles, suddenly, and Bernie gathers her into her arms again.

_“You got me singing // the only song I ever had.”_

“I listened to this every day the last few days I was in Kyiv,” Bernie says from where her nose is buried in Serena’s hair. “It was awful - I almost couldn’t bear to hear it because it reminded me so much of you _\- you got me thinking // I’d like to carry on -_ and yet I couldn’t bear not to listen to it because it was the only reminder I had of you, and I couldn’t bear to be without you.”

Serena looks up, clasping Bernie fiercely around the ribs. “I couldn’t bear to be without you either, you idiot.” Her face softens, though, and she strokes one finger down the side of Bernie’s face. “I was awful to everyone here while you were away, you know. My nickname became ‘Crazy Campbell’, and fair enough too.”

 _“You got me singing // like a prisoner in the jail,”_ Leonard Cohen sings, and Bernie and Serena share a long look. _“You got me singing // like my pardon’s in the mail.”_

Serena sighs. “Here’s your pardon then,” she says, and pulls Bernie towards her again. But Bernie pulls back, even though she’s smiling and trying desperately not to cry, and she points at the turntable, saying, “This is the bit I wanted you to hear tonight,” just as Leonard Cohen sings, _“- wishing // our little love would last…”_

Serena’s eyes fill with tears and she says, her voice cracking slightly, “Oh God, Bernie, yes, of course -“ and this time Bernie allows herself to be led, and they kiss deeply, letting the pain and anguish of the past few months wash away with their tears, as “the Hallelujah song” plays itself out on the turntable.

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly a large part of this was me wanting to remember Leonard Cohen in some way. (Rest in peace, Leonard - I still can't believe you're gone and I tear up every time I hear 'Hallelujah'.) I think Serena would enjoy Cohen, and the idea of Bernie and Serena sitting together listening to 'Hallelujah' was just too damn adorable for me to pass up.


End file.
